Former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer ditched his desk about a year ago.

Two days into the job, it’s unclear how Satya Nadella, the new chief executive of Microsoft, might transform the sprawling tech company.

But one big change is already underway: unlike his predecessor, Steve Ballmer, he’ll have a desk.

More than a year ago, Mr. Ballmer ditched his desk, choosing instead to work from an upholstered armchair facing a giant whiteboard. He also had a chaise against the window, for when he wanted to read and think with a tablet in his lap, he said in an interview late last year.

Mr. Ballmer, who will remain on Microsoft’s board, made the change about a year ago, coinciding with his company-wide initiative to go paperless—a move that signaled the importance of the company’s cloud technology, a booming sector which Mr. Nadella oversaw before his promotion. (Mr. Ballmer allowed a special dispensation for the legal department to retain its printer, but insisted that all other executives work on Surface devices, The Wall Street Journal’s Monica Langley reported.)

Nevertheless, one of Mr. Nadella’s first acts as chief on Tuesday was to have a desk moved in to his new corner suite, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Mr. Ballmer’s chairs, which he swiped from other offices because he didn’t want “to buy anything new,” were always in motion, Mr. Nadella recalled in an interview with the Journal late last year. If he had a small meeting, he pulled them in a tight circle; bigger ones were expanded to a larger circle facing each other. “We always rearrange” the chairs, he added.

In addition to his love for scribbling lists on the wall—journalist Walt Mossberg called him “maestro of the whiteboard” at a 2008 conference—Ballmer enjoyed other special features of his deskless workspace, including a miniature putting setup and a chin-up bar to hang from, the latter a remedy for his bad back.

Despite the obvious pitfalls—namely, the inability to say “I want that report on my desk by the morning”—several other tech CEOs have permanently stepped away from their desks, noting that it helps them focus and engage with colleagues. Some have gone even further, rejecting offices and personal work spaces altogether.

Lara Logan: Do you have an office here?
Jack Dorsey: I don’t. I don’t have an office. I don’t have a desk.
Lara Logan: You don’t have a desk at all, even, like–
Jack Dorsey: I don’t have a desk. I have my iPad.

Scott Berkun, who worked under Mr. Ballmer as a manager at Microsoft until 2003, recounts an even more unorthodox workplace in his 2013 book The Year Without Pants. At WordPress.com, a blogging software maker where Mr. Berkun worked as a team leader for a year, employees eschew desks, a central office and even bosses, preferring instead to form ad-hoc groups.

Perhaps they’re on to something. Scott Heiferman, the CEO of Meetup Inc., an online venture that encourages people to meet strangers in real life, finds desklessness liberating.

“If I have a desk, I pile up crap, and then I get consumed by the crap,” Mr. Heiferman told Mashable last year. Instead, he said, he wanders around the Meetup offices—they do have a central office—and parks his laptop wherever he sees fit. “I want to be engaged working with people,” he added.

Even when they don’t free themselves of their four-legged prisons altogether, many top executives have taken a more expansive view of the traditional office setup. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg famously sits in the bullpen with his colleagues and keeps desktop flair to a minimum. Likewise, Dennis Crowley, cofounder and CEO of the location-based review app Foursquare, sits among his peers in open-office style desks.

Perhaps Mr. Nadella will soon find his office and desk just as stuffy. For now, as he sets out to kick-start innovation at the tech behemoth, the least he could do is accumulate some clutter—a recent study published in Psychological Science found that a messy desk fosters creativity.

About At Work

Written and edited by The Wall Street Journal’s Management & Careers group, At Work covers life on the job, from getting ahead to managing staff to finding passion and purpose in the office. Tips, questions? email us.